YORK playwright Mike Kenny has no time for pantomime. He prefers to sneak up on a fairytale from a different angle, confident that children will join him on his journeys of the unexpected.

This is sweet music to the ears of Hull Truck Theatre artistic director Mark Babych, who bills his winter show as "the family Christmas production" of Sleeping Beauty.

Kenny's fantastical version premiered at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in December 2012, when The Press review reckoned Sleeping Beauty was given "not a rude awakening but certainly a reawakening".

The rude awakening now comes in Babych's Hull show, a rather more raucous creation, thanks to the electricity-charged, Sixties-inspired songs of musical director James Frewer that don't match the wit and charm of Oliver Birch's compositions for the world premiere.

As at Leeds in Gail McIntyre's show, Babych employs a cast of multi-tasking actor-musicians, six in total, this time supported by an eight-strong community ensemble, who join with the principals in chatting excitedly to the young audience in their seats before each half starts.

When thinking of fairy godmothers, Mike Kenny decided his take on Sleeping Beauty would be told by Nannas, inspired by his memories of his own nanna, who he "knew in all her moods, sunny and stormy", and in particular his abiding recollection of her prodigious knitting.

Hence the profusion of wool in Ciaran Bagnall's set design for a story notorious for its spinning jenny and pricked finger, with rugs placed over seating to either side of the stage.

Kenny charges six nannas – essentially a gang of grannies – with telling the story, just as he employs farmyard chickens on narrator duty in his interpretation of Jack And The Beanstalk.

The Nannas take on myriad roles, led by Annabel Betts's Nanna Janine becoming Princess Briar Rose, Kenny's feisty variation on the traditional blonde and demure Princess Beauty. This change goes down well with a modern audience, who connect far more readily with an action-girl princess.

Bad Nanna Sandra is played by Nicholas Goode – yes, a Goode guy as a baddie – all in black as he brings rock'n'roll swagger to the play's answer to Carabosse, issuing the sleep-inducing curse to the Princess after one too many failures to be invited to a party.

Harry Hamer's Nanna Dorothy Pink occupies the drum stool in a splendid pink jacket; Louise Shuttleworth is the show's driving force as Nanna Worrywart and Laurie Jamieson relishes his transformation from Nanna Noonoo to an absurdist caricature of a nice but dim, mock-heroic Prince.

Babych's show has more urgency and more noise than the Playhouse premiere, being almost manic in its storytelling, whereas the 2012 show benefited from a slower turning of the pages.

The comedy is now broader, not least in the Prince's new back story before his crucial kiss after the Princess's 100-year sleep, but a dusting of magic has been sacrificed in the desire for maximum rock'n'roll impact.

Sleeping Beauty, Hull Truck Theatre, until January 9 2016. Box office: 01482 323638 or hulltruck.co.uk